The qualitative results on the approvals for Abbott and Shorten, as well as preferred prime minister undercut the results from the quants.

While the quants suggest Labor is doing much better than the Liberals, the qual suggests that Bill Shorten's position is not very strong and that the results on all three issues are governed by reactions for and against Tony Abbott.

The first shows the word map for approval of Tony Abbott. If you click on it to enlarge you'll see that words like "lie", "liar", "power", "vision" and "tax" cluster around those who strongly disapprove of Abbott, while the words close to strong approval are "doing", "job", "decisions", "strong".

The two different points of view are summed up in these two quotes:

He has systematically lied to the Australian people about his intentions as PM during the election, about the state of the budget while in power, about facts (e.g. timing of decision on politicians'pay freeze) and enacted policies that maker no sense...

Tony Abbott sincerely believes in addressing pursuing effective management of Australia’s political and economic affairs so as to achieve medium and long term enduring national prosperity and productivity for the benefit of all Australians. In so doing he displays the character and competence necessary to do the job successfully.

 The words most closely associated with strong approval of Bill Shorten are "needs", "better", "job", "effective" and "Abbott". They are lacking in detail. The words most closely associated with strong disapproval are "union", "unions", "man", "power", "mess", and "people". Not as closely associated are "Gillard" and "negative". These are much more specific words and refer to Shorten's association with the unions, his record as an executioner of leaders, and Labor's record in managing the economy.

The word "strong" appears close to him, along with "leadership", however these concepts are viewed negatively in Shorten's case.

Again a couple of quotes illustrate the two different views (the first is from an ALP voter):

With Labor so dessimated and with a Royal Commission into unions, Shorten is in a bad position to try and do anything and make a name for himself. The party needs a non-union assiciated leader whio can build a following based on strong policies that are different to the Governemtn and not trying to get to the right of them on key issues.

Bill Shorten would be so much better as a leader, if he could act like a strong leader. Start by working at doing what Bob Hawke did "Bringing Australians Together", renewing the Labor Party, and stop all his silly childish griping.

The most striking thing about this map is how sparse Bill Shorten's end is in concepts. The next most striking thing is that someone who isn't leader of either party, Malcolm Turnbull, makes a strong appearance. 

"Abbott" is one of the most cited reasons for voting for Shorten, meaning that his vote is reactive to Abbott (as Abbott's was to Gillard's when he was opposition leader). The word "strong" is associated with Abbott, and some of the verbatims suggest Labor would be better off with a leader other than Shorten. As the rules of the ALP have been set so that there almost certainly cannot be a change of ALP leader this side of the next election, that might end up being a problem for Labor.

Tony is doing a fantastic jobs in foreign affairs (FTA's with Japan and Korea), working with Indonesia and China and maintaining relations with USA and UK. He is leading a libertarian government which is minimizing government meddling in our lives; and is setting right the structural fiscal imbalance and delusional spending of the Rudd / Gillard / Rudd era.

Shorten is lacklustre but is the lesser of two appalling alternatives. People used to say Abbott would never be PM, but the electorate hated Gillard and Rudd so much that his election became the only reluctant option.

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